Features

Dedicated judges spend two days  

jurying the  

250 projects 

Longfellow Arts and Technology Magnet Middle School is currently holding their fifth annual science fair. On display in the school theater are the products of 250 independent research projects on a variety of topics.  

An enthusiastic corps of scientist-volunteers from the Bayer Corporation, UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and elsewhere spent Saturday morning and all day Monday judging the students’ research projects.  

“Our judges are really dedicated. It’s great to see how carefully they study the students’ work. They take their job seriously,” says veteran science teacher Suzy Loper. 

This year’s fair features work from seventh- and eighth-graders grouped into social, physical and life science categories. The top projects from each category will be sent to compete in the Bay Area Science Fair in San Francisco. The science fair is supported by a grant from the Berkeley Public Education Foundation. 

The Longfellow Science Fair includes research on a variety of topics ranging from the best fertilizers to use for plants, the effects of food coloring and vinegar on electrolysis of water, how favoritism affects eyewitness memory, the influence of music on boys’ attitudes towards girls and which kind of pencil lasts the longest, to name a few. 

“It’s different than my day when you could slap together the old vinegar and baking soda volcano. We ask our students to pose a question they can find their own answer to, by trying it out for themselves.” says seventh-grade teacher Jonathan Cohen. 

The Longfellow science fair posters are on exhibit in the school theater starting at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday Feb. 6, with an awards ceremony at 6:30 p.m.